Assessing Writing Perceptions and Practices of Pharmacy Students1 (original) (raw)
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Student writing proficiency is considered to be a hallmark of educational excellence. This study reports on an iterated writing skills development program, incorporating elements of content, form and context, for science undergraduates. The program, which was initiated in first year biology and then iterated through a second year science unit, investigated student confidence about their writing and writing-related skills, and the correlation with actual writing ability in terms of an annotated bibliography and a literature review. Other things being equal, commencing second year students who had completed two first year essays had significantly higher confidence regarding five of the seven skills examined in this study, compared to students who had not. Further, upon completion of the unit, the level of confidence was still significantly higher with regard to four of these seven skills. However, there was no significant difference in marks for both second year writing tasks between students who had or had not completed the first year essays. This study demonstrates the considerable value that iterated writing cycles, including feedback and opportunities for revision, have on student perceptions of their writing and writing-related skills. However, students may be overestimating their actual ability to write in a scientific domain, given an apparent disconnect between their self-perceived ability and their actual marks for the assignments. Clearer instruction about increasing task difficulty, together with assessment and writing guidelines from unit coordinators and ALL staff, are required to better inform students so that their perceptions and actual writing abilities are more strongly aligned.
PROBING INTO ACADEMIC WRITING: BUILDING STUDENT'S CONFIDENCE TO WRITE
Student's responses are usually negative when invited to write, in the L 2 , anything from a paragraph to an academic paper in tertiary education. This is due to many different factors including the fact that students attending an ESP/EAP language course are usually of different language levels. The most difficult part of an ESP/EAP language teacher is to persuade students of the need to write in the foreign language and more specifically to write using the terminology of their discipline. Providing students with a broad range of opportunities to write, thus facilitating their ability to discover the socially appropriate language structures necessary in their science, will aid students in their quest for more knowledge. One first step which should be taken by the ESP/EAP language teacher is to enable students to distinguish the different academic writing styles such as tentative, formal, informal and objective, etc. This presupposes, on the side of the students, a sound knowledg...
Students' Self-Assessment of Their English Writing Skills
Background: Assessment is considered to be a process of collecting, synthesizing and interpreting information in order to make decisions on students' performance. In class, assessment can be carried out to diagnose students' problems, to assess their academic performance, to provide feedback to students and to plan instructions (Airasian, 1994). Self-assessment is done by learners to judge and monitor their own level of knowledge, performance and understanding and to get information about their learning (Cariaga-Lo, Richard and Frye, 1992, Dickinson, 1987). Hence, self-assessment is what learners see from their own perspectives (Oscarson, 1989). This way of assessment helps learners self-monitor their learning and develop metacognitive awareness of knowledge and thought. Materials and Methods In this research, 74 students from English department, School for Foreign Languages, Thai Nguyen university were asked to response to a questionnaire about their self-assessment of their English writing skills. All these students are third year English majors and are going to learn a 15-week essay writing course. The purpose of this questionnaire is to judge students' self-assessment of their English writing skills: what they often do before, while and after writing. Based on the results of the questionnaire, the researcher could diagnose students' problems and then adjust the course syllabus and teaching methods that would be appropriate to them. Results The majority of students have good habits of writing. They brainstorm, make an outline before writing, use some techniques when writing, make a revision on their writing and receive feedback from teachers and peers. However, about a quarter of respondents haven't followed the writing process and nearly 20% of them sometimes obey this progress. Conclusion It can be concluded that while a large number of students are aware of the proper writing process, many of them sometimes or rarely follow. That can be a struggle which prevents students' successful completion of the writing.
In today's world, writing is no longer a natural activity, especially for the younger generation. They look upon this activity as too complex, overwhelming and sometimes irrelevant. These attitudes are amplified when having to write in a second language. In EFL tertiary education, the expectations of academic achievement have become far greater than actual student capabilities. This study examined the possibility of using journal writing, both with and without an audience, as a way to address this issue. It is believed that by engaging Aynur Yürekli, Anita Afacan 2 students in the act of writing without the burden of an academic topic, it will indirectly impact students' academic performance. Seventy-six undergraduate students in three groups (one control and two experimental) were involved. Data was collected in the form of pre-test and post-test writing, student focus group meetings and an interview with the instructor. From the study, it was found that dialogue journal writing with an audience contributed to an increase in the proficiency level of students, especially in terms of their organizational skills. In addition, students who undertook journal writing expressed gains in self-confidence, and were aware of the role of journal writing in this. Finally, journal writing was found to offer insight to the instructor with regard to what is happening under the surface of a class, and thus better address students' needs.
Response to Student Writing. NCTE Research Report No. 23
Noting that while writing teachers acknowledge that responding to their students' writing is central to their teaching, they still express frustration about how to make their response effective. This book describes a two-part study conducted to discover how the nation's most successful writing teachers respond to their students' work. The first chapter provides background information, the rationale behind the study, and an elaboration of the research questions. The second chapter presents details of the experimental design, including procedures for selecting the 560 successful teachers and their 715 students who participated in the first part of the survey. This chapter also discusses ethnography-observing response practices-in the two ninth grade writing classes that participated in the second part of the study. The third chapter describes the response practices of the teachers, and their range and helpfulness, whil. 'he fourth chapter analyzes values about writing uncovered in the survey, the underpinnings and structuring of response. The fifth chapter provides a summary of the research, including characteristics of the successful teachers and their response practices, while the sixth chapter contemplates what can be learned from the study. The book concludes with 83 references and the following appendixes: (1) the National Writing Project surveys; (2) assignment sequences; (3) note-taking conventions and procedures for in-class data collection; (4) criteria for determining what was to be recorded on camera; (5) sr plementary tables; (6) questions for character analysis; and (/ student writ .ig samples. (SKC)
Research in Effective Teaching of Writing. Volumes I and II: Final Project Report
1986
A three phase study evaluated the comparative effectiveness of various features that comprise a postsecondary writing program. The first phase of the study examined the college compositlon programs on the 19 California State University (CSU) campuses to identify and describe distinctive program features. The second and third phases measured both students' writing performance and self-perceptions of their writing achievement. Results confirmed the general hypothesis that the organization of composition instruction does matter: certain aspects of postsecondary writing programs are significantly associated with improved student performance and self-perceptions. The following conclusions emerged from an analysis of the relations among the holistic (HS), correctness and efficiency (CZ), and development and focus (DF) scores: (1) HS correlated highly with CZ in the measurement of writing ability; (2) freshman composition students scored significantly lower in all three categories when only the upper-,division certification method was used; (3) CE graded student writing samples more severely than DF; (4) students wrote better in programs that included both instruction and certification; and (5) when key administrators encouraged strong campus-wide writing instruction and assistance, students' writing performance increased. Extensive appendices to this final project report appear in volume I. These include three articles published in the "Council of Writing Program Administrators Journal" reporting on this study, research documents used for this study (faculty questionnaire, campus fact sheet, interview protocols, student self-perception questionnaire, the essay topic, scoring guides, sample scored student essays), and data tables. (JD)
Writing Skills of Freshman Students of the College of Education
Psychology and Education: A Multidisciplinary Journal, 2023
Writing is one of the central pillars of language learning and should be major interest and concern to teachers and students. This study used the descriptive-comparative survey method. It determined the writing skills level of the freshman education students at Mindanao State University-Maguindanao in mechanics in terms of grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure and in rhetoric in terms of strategy, organization and style. Furthermore, the researcher utilized a researcher's-made communicative writing tests as research instrument of the study. The respondents of the study were the fifty six (56) BSEd freshman education. Based on the data gathered, the following summary of findings were presented: The writing skill level of the freshman college of education students in mechanics in terms of grammar was "satisfactory" with the mean of 4.09, punctuation was "satisfactory" with the mean of 4.06, sentence structure was "satisfactory" with the mean of 4.20, mechanics as a whole is "satisfactory" as indicated by the overall mean of 4.12; the writing skill obtained a Friedman X 2 r statistics of 2.153 and a p-value of 0.341 described as not significant; the writing skill level of the freshman college of education students in rhetoric in terms of strategy was "poor" with the mean of 3.71, organization was "satisfactory" with the mean of 4.44, style was "poor" with the mean of 3.72, and rhetoric as a whole was "satisfactory" as indicated by the overall mean of 3.96; the writing skill obtained a Friedman X 2 r statistics of 27.96 and a p-value of 0.001 described as significant; there was no significant difference between writing skills level in mechanics and rhetoric. Based on the findings of the study, it is concluded that the freshman Education Students' writing skills in mechanic and rhetoric need further enhancement.
Assessing Students' Writing: Countering Some Common Misbeliefs
2016
Assessing Student's Writing: Countering Some Common Misbeliefs In their attempt to come to terms with evaluating students' writing, many instructors across the curriculum fall prey to several common misbeliefs, which themselves reflect a paucity of information on the part of evaluators on how to evaluate writing fairly and objectively. Besides being in a quandary about what to evaluate, instructors are not certain either about how to go about assessing students' writing. In this paper, these common misbeliefs are first identified and discussed, after which suggestions are made on how to counter or rectify these types of fallacious thinking. By countering these misbeliefs, instructors can use evaluation as a catalyst to promote better writing skills on the part of the students. Second Annual College of Continuing Education Faculty Symposium on Teaching Effectiveness
Students and Their Writing: Perceptions, Motivations, and Behaviors
1987
A study examined the perceptions elementary school students hold toward writing and writing instruction, and questioned whether these perceptions vary by the kind and nature of instruction provided. A total of 96 students in grades three and four in a large midwestern middle class school took part in the study. The students were divided into two groups: (1) one group participated in a traditional approach to writing instruction defined in terms of separate, sequential skills being taught during an assigned period using a basal reader; and (2) the second group participated in a more informal approach allowing students to negotiate with the teacher concerning the choice of themes, book genres, writing and reading assignments, etc. Student answers on forced-choice questionnaires designed to probe their perceptions, interests, and their behavior toward writing indicated that students' perceptions do vary with the kind and nature of the instruction. Students in the informal classes appeared to have an advantage over their counterparts in the traditional :lasses across all prober employed in the study, and they saw writing as an enjoyable and meaningful activity that was initiated for their own purposes. Findings suggest that teachers and curriIlum specialists need to evaluate critically the methods and tasks used in writing instruction. (Five tables of data are included.) (NH)
The Relationship between Writing Self-efficacy and Writing Performance of Iranian EFL Students
International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature
A strong sense of self-confidence in the writing task is referred to as writing self-efficacy. There is a discrepancy between the scholars' views regarding the relationship between writing self-efficacy and writing performance. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate if there is any significant relationship between the students' writing selfefficacy and their writing performance. Also, there was an attempt to see if there is a gender difference in the students' writing self-efficacy and their writing performance. Convenient sampling was used to select 59 medical students (28 males and 31 females) from among medical university students. The instruments used in this study were Writing Selfefficacy Questionnaire and students' writing compositions. To analyse the data for both objectives, Pearson productmoment correlation was used. The results of this study showed that there was not any significant relationship between the students' writing self-efficacy and their writing performance. It was also found out that there was not any significant relationship between our male and female participants' self-efficacy and their writing performance.